


For Love, If It Finds You Worthy, Directs Your Course

by prairiecrow



Series: Terra Incognita [20]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Knight Rider (1982), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Weddings, pre-wedding jitters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 21:20:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/944787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark is about to make the public appearance of his life, and it's wracking the hell out of his nerves. Fortunately he has a good friend with him to offer excellent advice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Love, If It Finds You Worthy, Directs Your Course

"Tony…" Bruce's voice was gentle, even though he was saying the same thing, in the same mild tone, for the twenty-seventh time that day: _Calm your tits, everything's fine._  

Which didn't stop Tony from pacing compulsively, tugging at the cuffs of his dress shirt under the glossy black of his outrageously expensive jacket, checking his reflection in the ornate little waiting room's full-length gilt-framed mirror for easily the hundredth time in the past half hour. "Yeah, I get it. Everything's copacetic. I walk out there, marry the love of my life, and live happily ever after. No biggie." 

"That's right," and wow, if you could bottle Bruce's mellow tones you'd have a first-class replacement for Valium. "Pepper's taken care of everything," 

"Right," Tony repeated, glancing at the mirror. One hundred and one. "Who cares if the whole world's watching? That's kind of the point, right? Right!" 

Bruce nodded. His dark eyes, following Tony's hectic little movements, conspicuously did not judge. That was one of the things Tony appreciated most about him: Bruce had enough skeletons in his closet that he pointed fingers at nobody. Bruce had been to the rough side of Hell and back. Bruce knew where it was at. 

Still, he was pretty sure Bruce had never experienced this particular dread: "But —" 

He clamped his mouth shut. He couldn't say it, because it was both too stupid to be given the credence of speech and too awful to be contemplated. 

"But…?" Bruce was standing perfectly still, but something about him — some indefinable quality of spirit — moved slowly, hypnotically, like a snake charmer's sinuous dance in front of a coiled and nervous cobra. 

Tony finally came to a stop. Looked directly at his best man. Swallowed to try to bring some spit into a mouth suddenly bone dry. "What if he… just doesn't come down that aisle?" 

Bruce's slight smile suggested that the man who'd bought him that four thousand dollar Armani suit he was currently wearing (and another one for the reception, thank you very much) was the biggest idiot on the face of the Earth. "I think it's more probable that an alien invasion fleet composed entirely of giant cats will drop out of the sky and take the human race away to clean litter boxes on its home planet." 

"Don't joke about that," Tony snapped. "We're the Avengers. Shit like that happens to us every day, twice, before breakfast." 

Still smiling, Bruce shook his head. "I've seen you face planet-killing robots, hordes of murderous telepathic space dolphins, whole armies out for your blood — and this is what scares you to death? That KITT is suddenly going to decide that he doesn't love you anymore?" 

Tony tried to paste a devil-may-care quirk on his lips, and failed miserably. "Well, when you put it that way…" 

"The giant alien cats are a much more likely scenario." 

He turned to fully face his own reflection again: same stylish hair perfectly coiffed, same rakish beard-and-moustache combo, same rugged handsomeness… and the certain knowledge that underneath it all lay some pretty deep cracks. The truth emerged like a trickle of bloody water wrung from a stone: "He could do better." 

Bruce came up behind him and laid a calming hand on his shoulder. Looking into the reflection of the physicist's face, Tony could see darkness behind his eyes that rivalled Tony's own nightmares — and a genuine kindness that redeemed its ravening wrath, on their best days. "That doesn't matter. Out of all the people in the world, he chose you. And KITT's not someone who makes that kind of decision lightly." 

Beyond the double doors of solid and beautifully carved oak leading to the main nave of The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, the barely audible murmur of the waiting audience was replaced by a more definite sound: the opening bars of the original music Tony had commissioned from John Williams for this ceremony, and for his own entrance to the stage in particular. His heart rate took a sharp upward leap, hammering against the housing of the arc reactor embedded in his chest, and he uttered a tiny reflexive cough at the increase in pressure. 

Bruce raised an eyebrow at him and squeezed his shoulder.  

"Right," Tony repeated with a mixture of grimness and anxiety and fiercely rising hopeful joy that was so terribly ready to be crushed to ashes, "let's _do_ this," and he led the way to the double doors, which opened onto a short dark-panelled hallway, and beyond that… 

The vast space of the cathedral loomed overhead, stunning in the scale of its magnificence, but Tony in his preoccupation was only vaguely aware of it. The crowd of five hundred and twelve guests was an elegantly clothed blur on his left as he strode down the long red velvet carpet edged with black and mounted the shallow steps on the side the dais; used to being stared at and admired by all the world, he scarcely felt the impact of their thousand-eyed gaze. The rest of the wedding party was much clearer in his anxious sight: Reverend Gowarna in her maroon pastor's robes, standing in the centre of the stage like a sturdily built anchor… Steve so tall beside her in his dress uniform, wearing his best "I'm Captain America and I know what I'm doing" game face, although Tony knew for a fact that he'd been agonizing over his prayer of blessing as late as 10 p.m. last night… Clint and Natasha, flanking the red-carpeted "active" area of the stage as an honour guard… and as Tony passed her position Tasha offered him a curt nod, as if to say _Don't worry, we've got your back_. Tony returned the nod with a twitch of his chin, every movement at once tightly controlled and full of tension he couldn't quite contain, but he walked to his mark feeling a little bit better after that. 

The tone of the music changed when he came to a halt in front of the Reverend, barely resisting the urge to clasp his hands in front of him to keep them from fidgeting — it had been bold and majestic, with a flourish of trumpets soaring over the bass line, but now it became more intricate and subtle, and Tony had to admit that John had earned his money in producing a fitting soundtrack for the life and love of two of the finest superheroes on the planet. His gaze turned toward the end of the aisle, past the ranks of faces already turning to follow his cue… 

… and there, entering the walkway of crimson velvet with Thor on his right and Bonnie Barstow on his left, framed by their radiant smiles, came something even more gorgeous than the majestic setting of the finest cathedral in New York City, something even more elegant than the audio tapestry woven of delicate brasses and full-voiced clarinets, something with such joy in its artfully crafted hazel eyes, meeting Tony's across the yards that separated them, that all of Tony's nagging anxiety dissolved in an ocean of warmth and light, and was gone as if it had never been.  

Had he really doubted that his beloved would come to him through the darkest of nights and the direst threats? Hadn't they laid down their lives for each other already, even to the edge of doom? Was there any power on Earth that could hope to keep them apart? 

He felt the smile on his lips and knew that this time it was genuine — hell, he knew that he was probably grinning like an idiot, but he was damned if he could find it in himself to care, because every step KITT-as-Silver took was bringing Tony's true love closer to the shining moment when the whole world would witness their vows, and behold them united in the eyes of history forever. 

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> Would anybody be interested in a story of the wedding (including ritual text) told in considerably more detail? Because I've written the vows and could easily weave a tale around the entire ceremony, plus the reception (which is as extravagant as you'd expect a Tony Stark production to be)...


End file.
